1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of treatment of electronic circuit scraps.
More specifically, this invention relates to a device fore pre-treating electronic circuit scraps.
This invention further refers to a process for pre-treating electronic circuit scraps, that employs such kind of device.
By the term "pre-treating" it is meant in the present disclosure a treatment suitable to allow a subsequent recovery of their components, and particularly by which metals contained in the electronic circuit scraps are not already recovered, but these metals can be transformed into metal ions and then afterwards they can be recovered as electrolytic metals in a successive process.
2. Description of the Related Art
Circuit electronic scraps, regardless of their origin (computers, televisions, radio, telephonic systems, etc.) have showed themselves, when discharged, as a danger not to be disregarded for the environment wherein we live, without speaking of the fact that enormous quantities of metals which might become in time no longer available are so irreparably lost.
Therefore, the Applicant of the present application had already previously suggested a device able to treat such scraps so that it would be possible to recover metal contained in them.
Briefly, it provided an encounter of the electronic circuit scraps with a heat-exchange fluid at a high temperature for separating the various constituent components.
However, such device, has two fundamental drawbacks.
First, by means of it the quantity of unrecovered metal is considerable.
Second, during its operation at high temperature there is no safety against leakages from it of polluting gases into the atmosphere, some of which, even if in very small quantities, are extremely dangerous, such as for instance dioxines, bromine vapors, mercury vapors, phenols, and the like.